Wild Blue Skies

I'm a huge fan of On-Rail Shooter games, so I definitely had to try this one out after playing the demo. I've been organizing a list of this genre into sub-catagories based on how they play. If you are interested I will put a link in the comments of this review. (It is also available in my Profile Description.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~GAMEPLAY:~~~~~ First impression with the "Training Mode" was beautiful! Noticing the shadows of the upcoming loops on the water from a distant sunset got me really hyped up as a first impression. Then I got to the first mission. Pretty much to a T, it is straight up the Corneria Mission. And quite surprisingly annoyingly so. I can appreciate references and nods, but this one was quite literally Corneria from Starfox 64. This brought me down a notch, but I still wanted to continue on. Other missions can be compared to the other Star Fox 64 missions, like Katina, Fichina, MacBeth, Bolse Satellite, and so on. However, very few of them feels at least original. During missions that is free ranged, enemies can take easy shots at your teammates, without notice. So it is in your best interest to be fast at taking all the enemies down during free ranged missions. Bosses play pretty well and uniquely, so there is good Boss Variety. There are collectables and stats at the end of every mission, which makes good replay value and challenge to get better and better at. The game felt very difficult at times, but after understanding you must avoid damage at all cost, it became easier to handle. At first I agreed with others that a charged shot should be held down by the same button as the firing button, but I got pretty used to it. It did slow down the flow for a split moment as you try to swap on the fly with the button presses, but after repeat playthroughs, it was pretty fine. ~~~~~OVERALL:~~~~~ Absolutely adore the style of the game! The gentle colors, the artistic looks, and even the voice acting of the Bombers Crew. The Villains however can be pretty meh with the voice acting, but serviceable. And some puns they say can be eyerolling at times. The map being on a single planet with multiple routes is pretty unique. So far, I've only seen the Starfox series and Alastrius do the multiple different routes approach. At first this game really had me, but I started to feel disappointed and bored with it during my first to second playthrough. After my third attempt and so on, I started to see it as a good game, but still feeling weaker compared to the other On-Rail Shooters games on Steam. It did announce itself at a time Star Fox 2026 wasn't announced yet, and I wonder if its reception would have been different if that didn't come out. I personally think my overall opinions would have stayed the same, but maybe I would have loved the references from a game franchise that seemed dead. I personally would have appreciated just a little more boldness that would have pushed the "Star Fox" formula to add some more unique stuff. Honestly, I find it being held back by the Star Fox similarities, and I dislike having to compare it to Star Fox soo much. My disappointment was immeasurable once I met the final boss on both routes, if you know what I will compare it to, then you know what it compares to. But for those who solely are on PC wanting a familiar Star Fox experience, this might be a option for you! I didn't like it at first, but oddly after repeat playthroughs I found myself really enjoying it. I hope this game does pretty well, I'd love for them to make another On-Rails Game with even more style and flare!

this is an interesting one. for context, I love on-rails shooters and it's tough to find one I absolutely hate. so wild blue skies is a blast, and offers an increased difficulty level than some others (there's no difficulty level slider either). however, as the demo implied, this is a game that skews dangerously close to being a starfox 64 mimic. personally I wish they had come up with a unique story and not literally copied several stages along with the storyline nearly verbatim. the enemies are a bit more interesting than sf64, but there's no doubt you will feel like you're just replaying starfox (especially if you've played the new switch 2 remaster). all that said, I'm still having fun. I absolutely wish they had been more creative, and maybe they can update something to distinguish it a bit more, but I still recommend it as-is, especially if you don't have a switch 2. and on top of all that, it's only $15 which is honestly a ridiculous steal, plus I honestly prefer this art style over any other rails shooter I've played INCLUDING the sf remaster. as far as requests go, I would love to see a stage select so you can practice later stages on your own in order to improve your runs (playing them in an arcade fashion like this wouldn't count for ribbon/medal collection). starfox remaster added this feature and it's honestly a game changer, especially if the difficulty level picks up and you find yourself struggling with the hard paths. (I played on steamdeck and didn't have any performance issues but I didn't check the framerate)

New star fox like, excellent replayability. ship blocks my view just like in the SNES days.

Very fun bite sized title at a very fair price. It's obvious this is the "we have starfox at home" but for 20 dollars the production value and polish is very impressive. It's a shame the deck port is capped at 30fps with basically no graphical options even when docked, Works without issues on deck but keeps crashing on PC, is it my build that's just showing it's age? Maybe, but I play much more demanding games on a regular basis without any problems whatsoever so I doubt it. Hopefully this is something that will get adressed in future patches because I'd much rather play at 1440p 180fps than 800p 30fps in a game that requires quick reactions and sometimes very unforgiving timing like this.

It's a fine game, but the biggest thing holding it back are the controls. You are going to have a terrible time if you can't remap your buttons right. Make sure to set your movement sensitivity to Very High for the ships to feel even remotely nimble and agile. I'm really bummed there's no in-game way to remap controls, or at least some alternate control schemes the devs could offer us. Steam Controller input is broken too; for my Xbox controller, trying to remap and swap bumper and trigger simply does not work at all, I have to use a third party remap. If you're a big Star Fox 64 fan, and you want to like this game, and you're willing to put in the work to tinker with and tweak all your inputs, this game is for you, otherwise, I struggle to recommend it. As a side note, the difficulty curve is no joke for full completion of each level, in keeping with the SF64 inspiration. I'm eager to see the devs fix the control schemes so I can come back and give a better review!

I'll start off by saying I enjoy the game, and for around $15, I feel like I got what I want. Sure it's a little rougher around the edges compared to Starfox, but I wasn't going in expecting something as highly polished and perfected as Starfox is. I haven't played a Starfox game in probably around 20 years since the N64 and I'm not a die hard fan. Once I switched the option where you can hold the fire button to rapid fire instead of having to tap it, the game got much more bearable. I do wish the inclusion of a U-turn and some things like that were included and the difficulty of the game surprised me. I wasn't going in expecting to have to sweat to finish the game. I do wish there were some difficulty options that made the game easier to enjoy the first time until I improve and can take on the greater challenge. I have beaten basically every souls-like out there and I'm no stranger to hard games and I actually enjoy them. But I do wish I could just vibe out and enjoy the cute characters and story before I get the grind on. Overall, if you want a few hours of shooting things with cute characters, I would recommend this. If you are a die hard Starfox fan looking for a replacement, I would say look elsewhere. Hopefully the devs give it some love and iron out some gameplay problems and add some difficulty options. But I think the game is a fair deal for the price.

After Beating the easy route: It's solid. Though I would also argue it feels a bit less in most respects than Star Fox 64. Like the dialogue is good, serviceable, but it feels slightly off for some reason. The music is also good, but much of it isn't memorable. The shooting works great when the continuous fire option is on, no real problems there. And finding out how to route to different levels is also good, comparable to 64 in that respect. I expect the team that made it is working on a patch, and I plan to cycle back and play more when that happens. For now, I'd say at $15 this is properly priced. So buy it at full if you're remotely interested. Waiting for a patch is also reasonable. Initial impression, this is a Star Fox knock off. (Like it REALLY is one, even the tutorial feels really similar.) That said, it seems to be done in a way that seems more like the creators are fans trying to make more Star Fox. And there really hasn't been much of that so I don't mind. Looking forward to playing more!

Enjoying the game. If you just want to play an old Star Fox game it’s enjoyable. If it was more than $15 I would have expected more but for that price I am happy with the purchase